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Gaia People

Jenni Virtanen

University of Helsinki

Jenni Virtanen received her PhD from the University of Helsinki in June 2005 with a thesis on "Asteroid orbital inversion using statistical methods". The statistical approach and the new numerical methods described in the thesis have enabled reliable and detailed studies of the problem of initial orbit computation that were not possible before. This is particularly relevant for newly discovered moving objects and is also applicable to the sparse asteroid data that will gradually accumulate during the Gaia mission. As part of her thesis work Jenni performed simulations of asteroid orbit computation (appropriate for Gaia) showing that even exiguous data if of high accuracy is highly useful when evaluating the uncertanties in the orbits of small solar-system bodies.